Celebrating DFCM's 2026 Senior Promotions: Full and Associate Professors

Dr. Anne Biringer MD CCFP FCFP is a comprehensive academic family physician who had an active obstetrical practice for over 40 years. Her main academic focus has been on perinatal education and practice which has been reflected in multiple leadership roles, research grants and publications as several awards and honours.

Dr. Biringer is recognized as an expert in and advocate for family medicine obstetrics education with the goal of ensuring that communities are able to offer perinatal care that is close to home for all child-bearing Canadians. She is co-editor of the unique multi-author book “Teaching Perinatal Care: A Practical Guide” which is being used widely by faculty across Canada. She has also had broad impact on interprofessional perinatal education and practice and her teaching has extended to physicians, nurses and midwives in multiple African countries to ensure access to safe childbirth.

Her clinical research has focused extensively on perinatal mental health, but has also included infectious diseases in pregnancy, gestational weight gain, prevention of preterm labour and collaboration on multiple guidelines for perinatal care.

Dr. Biringer’s accomplishments have led to many awards, the most prestigious being the Victor Johnson award from the CFPC (which recognizes one family physician per year for their leadership and continuous and enduring contributions to the discipline of family medicine) and the establishment of the Dr. Anne Biringer Chair in Family Medicine Pregnancy and Newborn Care at Mount Sinai Hospital in her honour. 

Dr. Steven Marc Friedman is an Attending Physician in Emergency Medicine at University Health Network, a Clinician Investigator at the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute, and Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto. He completed medical training at the University of Toronto and McMaster University, followed by an MPH at Harvard University.

Dr. Friedman’s academic work is grounded in the view that the emergency department is not only a setting for acute clinical care, but also a distinctive environment for teaching, public health innovation, diagnostic inquiry, and translational research. As the founding Research Director of UHN Emergency Medicine, he helped develop the research infrastructure for one of Canada’s leading academic emergency medicine programs. He also founded and directs STAR-EM, Canada’s first structured summer research program in emergency medicine for pre-clerkship medical students. Since 2019, STAR-EM has trained multiple cohorts, produced peer-reviewed publications and international presentations, and become a model for early scholarly mentorship.

Dr. Friedman’s research and publications focus on cycling safety and on embedding public health and diagnostic initiatives into acute care. His cycling safety work examines the relationship between infrastructure and injury prevention, as well as barriers to helmet use and helmet-promotion strategies. He has also led emergency department-based screening and research protocols that support earlier identification and linkage to care for hepatitis C and emerging infections, including COVID-19. His scholarship has been cited by Statistics Canada, the CDC, WHO, and UNESCO.

Dr. Kulamakan Kulasegaram is an internationally recognized education scientist whose research has advanced how assessment supports learning, expertise development, and curriculum improvement. Dr. Kulasegaram's work seeks to bring evidence and theory to the continuum of medical education while harnessing the values and passions of learners and teachers. His work bridges assessment theory, clinical reasoning, and the use of large-scale education data to strengthen medical education systems. Across his career, he has been privileged to study practical education problems using his favourite theories with meaningful impact across the continuum of medical education. And along the way, he has the good fortune of working with passionate and clever colleagues and learners. 

Dr. Kulasegaram holds the Temerty Chair in Learner Assessment and Program Evaluation within medical education at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine. He is an Education Scientist at the Wilson Centre and the Office of Education Scholarship in DFCM. Beyond his research, Dr. Kulasegaram has made major institutional contributions through leadership in the Office of Education Scholarship in DFCM and in the broader Temerty Faculty of Medicine's curriculum and assessment renewals. 

Dr. Megan Landes is the Head of Division of Emergency Medicine at the DFCM. She has been at DFCM since 2010 and is a Clinician Investigator with the Research and Advocacy Program. Dr. Landes is also an attending staff doctor in the Emergency Department of the University Health Network (UHN), the University of Toronto’s largest downtown teaching hospital, and a Strategic Director for the Toronto Addis Ababa Academic Collaboration in Emergency Medicine (TAAAC-EM), which is working with Addis Ababa University to deliver Ethiopia’s first emergency medicine residency program.

She has worked clinically in Lesotho, Malawi and Ethiopia in both emergency medicine and HIV services. She specializes in operational research around the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. Building on this expertise in HIV research in sub-Saharan Africa, Dr. Landes has recently turned her focus to expanding access to HIV testing in Ontario via suspected high-prevalence emergency departments.

In partnership with the Ontario HIV Treatment Network, the Ministry of Health and Public Health Ontario, she is currently leading a consortium of three Ontario hospitals in implementing rapid/point-of-care HIV testing in their emergency departments (FAST HIV: Feasible, Accessible, Standard Testing for HIV in the Emergency Department).

Additionally, her research interests include the delivery of emergency medicine services in low-resource settings, and she is a founding member and Director of the Global Health Emergency Medicine (GHEM) group at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Chris Cavacuiti, BA, MD, CCFP (AM), MHSc, FCFP, CCSAM, DFASAM, is a family physician and addiction medicine specialist with a longstanding commitment to serving marginalized and underserved populations. Prior to founding TrueNorth Medical Centres in 2013, he worked at St. Michael’s Hospital, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Casey House AIDS Hospice, and Seaton House Homeless Shelter. His clinical, research, and advocacy work has focused on addiction medicine, hepatitis C and HIV care, LGBTQ+ health, and Indigenous health and wellness.

Dr. Cavacuiti holds certification in addiction medicine from the American Board of Addiction Medicine and has received both the Certificate of Added Competence in Addiction Medicine from the College of Family Physicians of Canada and the Ontario Medical Association’s Focused Practice Designation in Addiction Medicine.

A recognized leader in the field, Dr. Cavacuiti serves on several professional committees, including the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) Publications Council. He is the current Chair of the Ontario Medical Association Section on Addiction Medicine. He was lead editor of Principles of Addiction Medicine: The Essentials and is the author of Suboxone: A Handbook for Patients and co-author of Opioid Use Disorder: A Handbook for Families.

Dr. Karen Fleming is the chief of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Sunnybrook. Her portfolio also includes the education scholarship lead and the director of mentorship and continuing professional development for the division of family medicine obstetrics at Sunnybrook.

Dr. Fleming established the Women and Babies 4P Maternal Health Clinic for women whose pregnancies were complicated by gestational hypertension or preeclampsia. The clinic provides inter-professional education and counselling to improve women’s future health. Her research interests include chronic disease prevention for women, exercise in pregnancy for sedentary women and elite athletes, pregnancy complications as predictors of women's future health, and exercise as medicine across the lifespan to improve health for not one, but two, generations.

Dr. Amy Freedman is a comprehensive family physician with a Certificate of Added Competence in Care of the Elderly. She has practiced and taught family medicine for over 25 years at St. Michael’s Hospital in the St. James Town community and at Baycrest Health Sciences.

Dr. Freedman has contributed extensively to curriculum and professional development in Care of the Elderly. She developed more than a dozen geriatric learning modules distributed nationally through the Practice-Based Learning Program at McMaster University. She has also worked with the Canadian Coalition for Senior’s Mental Health on national guidelines addressing social isolation and loneliness in older adults, and with the Centre for Effective Practice to create the evidence-based “Preventive Care for Older People (PCOP)” reminder tool.

She co-founded the St. Michael’s Academic Family Health Team Home Visit Program, an inter-disciplinary team serving frail homebound seniors in the downtown core of Toronto. Through this work, she has collaborated with colleagues, students and patients, publishing and presenting nationally on home-based primary care.

She is a dedicated and enthusiastic teacher in undergraduate and postgraduate education, as well as in continuing professional education. She served as Program Director of the Care of the Elderly Enhanced Skills Program from 2016-2024. She has been recognized by the Department of Family and Community Medicine with awards in Role Modelling Clinical Excellence, Sustained Excellence in Teaching, and Mentorship. She has mentored numerous trainees throughout her career, many of whom have gone on to hold leadership roles in geriatric and home-based care

Dr. Abbas Ghavam-Rassoul is an academic family physician at St. Michael's Hospital with a career spanning clinical care, education leadership, and system-level innovation in collaborative mental health.  

He has demonstrated sustained excellence in teaching, reflected in consistently strong learner evaluations and recognition through multiple awards, including the DFCM Awards of Excellence in Teaching and Leadership and the Risa Freeman Award for sustained scholarship. As Residency Program Director and Director of the Academic Fellowship and Graduate Studies Program, he has led curriculum development, faculty development, and mentorship across undergraduate, postgraduate, and graduate education. His international teaching and program delivery have extended to Saudi Arabia, Oman, Japan, and Thailand. 

Dr. Ghavam-Rassoul co-developed and co-leads the INTAPT program, a graduate and continuing education faculty development course delivered locally and internationally. He co-led the Toronto Addis Ababa Academic Collaboration in Family Medicine, contributing to the creation of Ethiopia’s first Family Medicine program.  

His scholarly work has advanced collaborative mental health care through the development of national quality indicators and a widely adopted quality framework supported by the Mental Health Commission of Canada.

Dr. Anita Greig is a community-based family physician in Toronto. She is also Faculty Development Lead for Family Medicine at Sinai Health System.

She believes that children are our future; investments in child, youth, and young adult health, especially in the area of prevention, will lead to benefits for individuals, families and society in general. Similarly, commitment to learners builds the future of family medicine. She understands that teaching is a two-way street and is grateful for the opportunity to both teach and learn from undergraduates, post-graduates, and peers.

Dr. Greig is the author of the Greig Health Record and the Greig Health Record for Young Adults. These are evidence-based tools for preventive care for ages 6 to 17 and 18 to 24 years of age and serve as clinical practice guidelines for Canadian children and young adults. She has received the CFPC Award of Excellence for this work. There are a number of associated publications, including the most recent update of the Greig Health Record from 2025 and update articles published in the January and February 2026 editions of Canadian Family Physician. Dr. Greig’s latest endeavour is partnering in the creation and delivery of webinars on Children’s Mental Health though the Ontario College of Family Physicians.

Dr. Jennifer Hulme is a transformative leader who has tirelessly improved the care of vulnerable populations in the Emergency Department. Through empowering and innovative programs, including Peer Support and Indigenous Patient Navigators, she has made the ED a safer and more effective place for those experiencing marginalization to receive essential healthcare. Dr. Hulme’s dedication to community engagement is evident in the launch of a new Community Advisory Council, setting a new standard for inclusive healthcare leadership.

Dr. Hulme is an attending emergency physician at the University Health Network (UHN), and she chairs the Centre for Global Equity in Emergency Medicine (GEM Centre) and co-chairs its Health Equity Committee. She has led and contributed to global health work in Canada, Mexico, India, Bangladesh, and Timor-Leste, supporting initiatives in family planning as well as maternal and child health. Her work focuses on research that informs health policy, including strengthening health systems and improving care for underserved populations

Dr. Incardona is an emergency medicine physician at Michael Garron Hospital. She completed her family medicine training at the University of Toronto and earned a Master of Health Sciences degree in Bioethics at the Joint Centre for Bioethics, University of Toronto. Since joining the DFCM as a Faculty member in 2009, she has held various leadership roles including Faculty Lead for Ethics in Professionalism for the MD program. She is currently the Professionalism Remediation lead for the MD program and the Rural Northern Initiative Program Coordinator for the DFCM.

Her academic work has centred around three interconnected areas: ethics education, serious illness communication, and professionalism. She has focused on advancing the education of interprofessional healthcare professionals through innovative curriculum design, faculty development, and educational scholarship. She has led the development and implementation of ethics and professionalism curricula for undergraduate and postgraduate learners and has played a key role in shaping approaches to the assessment, coaching and remediation of professional behaviour in undergraduate medical education.

Dr. Incardona's work in serious illness communication reflects the integration of ethics and clinical practice, ensuring that patients' experiences, values, and goals remain central while developing practical approaches that help healthcare providers navigate complex conversations about serious illness and decision-making. It is through this person-centred approach that she has sought to improve the quality of serious illness communication and decision-making through the development, implementation, and dissemination of educational interventions and practical solutions for patients, individual clinicians, and interprofessional healthcare teams.

Dr. Maria Ivankovic is an Emergency Physician and Associate Chief of the Emergency Department at St. Joseph’s Health Centre, Unity Health Toronto. Recognized for her contributions to medical education, she has held several leadership roles within the University of Toronto’s Division of Emergency Medicine, including serving as Faculty Development Lead for 10 years. An award-winning educator and invited speaker, Dr. Ivankovic is committed to advancing excellence in clinical teaching, faculty development, mentorship, and sponsorship. Through educational leadership, scholarship, conference presentations, and faculty development initiatives, she has contributed to the advancement of emergency medicine education locally, nationally, and internationally. Her work has had a lasting impact on learners, colleagues, and educational programs across the department and beyond.

Dr. David Lawrence, MD, MPH, CCFP(SEM), Dip Sport Med is a Sports & Exercise Medicine Physician in Toronto. He is the Director of the David L. MacIntosh Sport Medicine Clinic (Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education, University of Toronto), Lead Physician for the Toronto Blue Jays, and a consultant sports medicine physician at the Dovigi Orthopaedics Sports Medicine Clinic at Mount Sinai Hospital.

Dr. Lawrence is actively engaged in medical education and academic leadership. He serves on the Competency Committee and Residency Program Committee for the University of Toronto’s PGY3 Enhanced Skills Program in Sport and Exercise Medicine and is a member of the National Credentialing Committee of the Canadian Academy of Sport and Exercise Medicine (CASEM). A dedicated clinical educator, he was recognized with the inaugural 2025 Mount Sinai Hospital Family Medicine Award for Excellence in Consultant Teaching for his outstanding contributions to resident education and mentorship. In 2025, he was also honoured to serve as the Keynote Speaker at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine Pre-Commencement Ceremony.

Dr. Lawrence is actively engaged in research focused on brain injury, concussion, injury prevention, exercise rehabilitation, and emerging therapeutic approaches in health and performance. He serves as a Scientific Advisor to the Tannenbaum Institute for Science in Sport (TISS) Research Advisory Committee and contributes to the advancement of sport medicine scholarship through research and knowledge translation.

Dr. Onye Nnorom is a distinguished physician, advocate, public speaker and leader in the field of public health and equity. She is a family doctor and public health and preventive medicine specialist. She is Associate Chief Medical Officer of Health for the Province of Ontario; the Chief and Medical Director of Health Equity and Population Health at Lakeridge Health; and the Black Health Faculty Lead in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto. She is also a medical consultant at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). Dr. Nnorom has dedicated her career to addressing health disparities and improving health outcomes for marginalized communities, with a particular focus on Black populations. Dr. Nnorom is the co-founder of the Black Health Education Collaborative, which was established to provide online educational resources on anti-Black racism and Black health for health professional students, clinicians and public health practitioners. Recently, she launched a social media outreach initiative called Healthcaring Differently to encourage diverse youth to explore careers in medicine. Dr. Nnorom’s expertise lies at the intersection of anti-racism, community health and healthcare transformation.  

Dr. James Owen is a family physician at Unity Health Toronto, where he works at the Wellesley-St. James Town Health Centre. His clinical practice focuses on HIV primary care and prevention, inclusive healthcare for sexual and gender minorities, and care for other vulnerable and/or marginalized populations.

Dr. Owen has been the Year 2 Director at the University of Toronto MD Program since 2021. He has a passion for medical education, with a focus on developing engaging learning environments for contemporary learners, and engaging and amplifying diverse voices, including patients and community members. He had previously created the second-year Complexity and Chronicity course for the Foundations Curriculum and was its course director until Spring 2022. He also held the role of 2SLGBTQIA+ Health Education Lead for the MD Program for several years.

Dr. Owen was the recipient of the W.T. Aikins Award for Excellence in Course/Program Development and Coordination in 2024. He was also a co-recipient of the Miriam Rossi Award for Health Equity in Medical Education in 2019.

Dr. Meeta Patel is an emergency physician at North York General Hospital and Associate Professor in the Division of Emergency Medicine, Department of Family and Community Medicine (DFCM) at the University of Toronto. She completed both her Family Medicine and Emergency Medicine training at the University of Toronto, in addition to a Master of Science in Community Health in Health Practitioner Teacher Education and the Education Scholars Program.

Throughout her academic career, Dr. Patel has made significant contributions to medical education, faculty development, learner affairs, and institutional leadership across the University of Toronto. She is widely recognized as a thoughtful educator, collaborative leader, and strong advocate for psychologically safe and inclusive learning environments.

In addition to her clinical work in Emergency Medicine, Dr. Patel serves as Associate Director within the Learner Experience Unit in the Office of Learner Affairs at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine and as Faculty Development Lead for the Division of Emergency Medicine within DFCM. She previously held leadership roles including NYGH Pre-Clerkship Director and Undergraduate Emergency Medicine Site Director. Through these roles, she has led institutional initiatives focused on learner experience, mistreatment navigation, educational culture, and faculty development.

Dr. Patel has contributed to numerous workshops, conferences, rounds, and cross-divisional educational initiatives that foster collaboration, mentorship, professionalism, and equity-informed educational practices. A highly regarded teacher and mentor, she is known for her compassionate leadership style and commitment to building supportive academic communities where learners and faculty can thrive.

Dr. Danyaal Raza is a family physician and the inaugural Primary Care & Health Policy Scholar at the Department of Family & Community Medicine at St. Michael’s Hospital. His writing, research and commentary focus on health system reform, and the effects of commercial determinants on change. His portfolio of work can be found at danyaalraza.com. 

Dr. Raza also serves as Board Chair of the St. Michael’s Hospital Academic Family Health Team, as Knowledge Translation Lead of the Health Tech and Society Lab based at Women’s College Research Institute, and on the Board of Directors of the Atkinson Foundation. He is past Chair of Canadian Doctors for Medicare, and former faculty lead for Social Accountability at the University of Toronto’s Department of Family & Community Medicine. He is the founding physician lead of the St. Michael’s Hospital Sumac Creek Health Centre in Toronto’s Regent Park, where he continues to practice. His analysis has been featured in the Toronto Star, Globe & Mail, Washington Post, The Guardian, CBC, and CTV, among others.